A new Beatles documentary aims to tell the group's story using footage filmed by fans. With support from the Beatles' label, a Toronto-based production company is seeking bootlegs, photographs, sounds and stories from the height of Beatlemania, including material from the Fab Four's airport arrivals and radio station visits.

The Beatles Live! will be a "collaborative global quest to find and reveal hidden films". OVOW Productions is working with archivists, collectors and "social media strategists" to track down Beatles footage from October 1963 until their last major gig, at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on 29 August 1966. This amounts to more than 253 concerts in 114 cities, according to the project website, including appearances in Beirut, Karachi and Kolkata.

While OVOW claims to be operating with the "authorisation" of Apple Corps, it's not clear how much the Beatles' stakeholders have committed to – or invested in – the film. Until the end of this year, the Beatles Live! team is simply gathering footage, presumably for a demo reel. The film-makers said: "Colour amateur materials are the highest priority of this project. Were you there? Were your parents there? Your grandparents?"

This proposed Beatles film follows news of another crowdsourced music documentary, announced earlier this week. Ridley Scott is among the backers of Springsteen & I, a portrait of Bruce Springsteen that will be told through fans' "raw footage … personal insights, abstractions and reflections" about the singer, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Director Baillie Walsh is gathering material with a view to a theatrical release in 2013.